The Dark Side of ARGCS Richmond – Infernities

Today I’m back to talk about my tournament experience at ARGCS Richmond with Infernities. I first want to give a huge congrats to Patrick Hoban for winning his fourth major event in under a year, a really impressive feat. Though I ended up short losing on the bubble to the one thing I didn’t want to face which was a mirror match which I had no experience in. My good friend Brandon Wigley ended up making it to the Top 8 of the event with the exact same decklist that we both worked to make, though I was hoping he would finally get his first win.

Going into ARGCS Richmond, I didn’t know what I was going to play. I tested Dragons extensively and no matter what I did I just wasn’t getting the results I wanted. After playing mirror matches I found those to be awful, going 2nd staring down a [ccProd]Stardust Spark Dragon[/ccProd] and[ccProd]Vanity's Emptiness[/ccProd] with no [ccProd]Phoenix Wing Wind Blast[/ccProd] in sight lead to my defeat many times. One huge factor was the fact that the deck could brick almost as much as Spellbooks do, having dead draw cards or just by having too many Tuners, and even opening up with 2+ Dragon Rulers can be bad if your hand can’t support them. Also the fact that everybody knew that Dragons would most likely be the most played deck and I didn’t want to get locked out of the game by an [ccProd]Imperial Iron Wall[/ccProd] or [ccProd]Soul Drain[/ccProd], I already dealt with infinite floodgate cards when I ran Water at multiple events and I wasn’t a fan. I just about resigned myself to running Dragons when Brandon Wigley messaged me on Dueling Network one night about a week before Richmond telling me he has found the deck and it turned out to be Infernity. I was skeptical at first but after learning how to play the deck and testing it against the field I was no longer worried and actually started to see the deck as a serious option for Richmond.

One of the great things about the deck is that you got free games just by winning the die roll and combo’ing off turn 1. The deck also was made to beat Dragons as you effectively had 6 Emptiness’ in your deck games 2 and 3. Something that many people think is that the deck loses to [ccProd]Maxx “C”[/ccProd] which isn’t the case. Getting “C”ed turn 1 isn’t the end of the world, depending on your hand you can just stop and search an Infernity trap card and set the rest of your hand. Most of the time people will Maxx your [ccProd]Infernity Necromancer[/ccProd] or your [ccProd]Stygian Street Patrol[/ccProd], and at that point you can just search an Infernity trap and stop. You can also just give them the plus one if they “C” you turn one and make [ccProd]Lavalval Chain[/ccProd] to stack [ccProd]Infernity Archfiend[/ccProd], at that point you force them to be able to get through your traps and deal with Archfiend next turn. Sure there are points where it can hurt, like when you they have a board or you have no traps, but those scenarios come up less than the others. Other hand traps like [ccProd]Effect Veiler[/ccProd] and [ccProd]D.D. Crow[/ccProd] hurt a bit more as they stop your play altogether but luckily those cards didn’t see a high amount of play at the event. The Infernity traps are good against just about every deck so the deck doesn’t struggle too much against any of the lesser played decks. The deck does fairly well in a simplified game state so summoning Excition Knight to do so and clear the field was something I did a good amount in testing and in the tournament.

I tested a good amount against my good friend Jono Ritzau on DN for a few nights and the results were looking good, the deck was even doing well when he was maining [ccProd]Needle Ceiling[/ccProd] in Mermails. Brandon and I kept on going over the deck and what matchups we could potentially face and kept on tweaking the main to make it perfect for the ARGCS. This is what we finally ended up with for the event.

[ccDeck="Main Deck"]

1 Armageddon Knight

1 Dark Grepher

2 Summoner Monk

2 Stygian Street Patrol

3 Infernity Necromancer

3 Infernity Archfiend

1 Archfiend Heiress

3 Upstart Goblin

3 Soul Charge

3 Instant Fusion

1 Infernity Launcher

1 Book of Moon

1 Reinforcement of the Army

1 Foolish Burial

1 Bottomless Trap Hole

1 Solemn Warning

2 Wiretap

1 Infernity Barrier

3 Vanity’s Emptiness

3 Infernity Break

1 Compulsory Evacuation Device

2 Trap Stun[/ccDeck]

[ccDeck="Side Deck"]3 Tyrant’s Tummyache

1 Dark Hole

3 Mystical Space Typhoon

3 Fiendish Chain

2 Debunk

1 Soul Drain

1 Dimensional Fissure

1 Needle Ceiling[/ccDeck]
[ccDeck="Extra Deck"]

Number 50: Blackship of Corn

2 Leviair the Sea Dragon

2 Lavalval Chain

1 Fusionist

1 Kamionwizard

1 Darkfire Dragon

2 Diamond Dire Wolf

1 Number 66: Master Key Beetle

1 Abyss Dweller

1 Number 106: Giant Hand

1 Number 101: Silent Honor Ark

1 Evilswarm Excition Knight[/ccDeck]

Not really much to say about the monsters, [ccProd]Summoner Monk[/ccProd] might be questionable to some but with the inclusion of [ccProd]Soul Charge[/ccProd] it allows for some really crazy plays. At first we had 2 [ccProd]Instant Fusion[/ccProd]s in the deck, but then we came to realize that it was another “go” card that allowed you to go off when going first so it was another card you really wanted to see in your opening hand so we ended up bumping it up to three even though it was weak to cards like Maxx “C” and Vanity’s Emptiness. One of the main selling points of the deck was the fact that it could support 3 Vanity’s Emptiness. If you went first and were able to go off and had an Emptiness in your hand you were most likely going to win no matter what you were facing since most deck have to special summon to get over your field. Against Dragons, you would most likely try to lock them out the game by summoning Key Beetle+Emptiness, I won quite a few matches against Dragons by doing that including my Round 2 feature match at Richmond. Even if you weren’t able to combo off it was great being able to hold the opponent at bay just by summoning Archfiend and setting a few traps along with Emptiness until you were able to combo off.

In the beginning we had just two Trap Stuns in the deck and zero Wiretaps, but in testing I was losing random games to just getting Trap Stun’ed and either dying or them putting up an unbreakable board. Wiretap got included in the main for that reason; also being able to hit opposing Wiretaps and counter traps was also good. The card many people have to Google in order to find out what is does is Tyrant’s Tummyache. The card reads as follows:

Obviously the last line of text will not be a drawback for Infernity most of the time. Against Dragon decks it’s just a better Emptiness as you can still special summon all you want and it won’t leave when you play a card. The only thing Dragons are able to do is summon [ccProd]Debris Dragon[/ccProd] and bringing [ccProd]Mythic Tree Dragon[/ccProd] back to make a Rank 4 and that’s even if they run a Rank 4.

The 3 Fiendish Chain in the side deck was specifically for decks that weren’t Dragons like Mermails, Spellbooks, and Geargia. It was between it and [ccProd]Black Horn of Heaven[/ccProd] but Fiendish Chain was better against more decks and we really didn’t want to drop any matches to a deck in the tournament we weren’t expecting.

The deck does have a few problems though. Drawing too many monsters is one of them, as it’s really hard for the deck to function with 3+ monsters in your hand that aren’t Summon Monk or [ccProd]Dark Grepher[/ccProd]. If you don’t see any form of S/T removal it can be hard to work through 3+ traps, which is why I thought Geargia could be a shaky matchup for the deck because of the plethora of backrow the deck runs. Even with the flaws the deck has I felt that it was better for me to run this over Dragons going into Richmond.

Richmond was a fun event for me as I have never ran the deck in an event before so it was a new experience for me. Some people might call the deck degenerate watching people play with the deck but trust me; it is a piece of work when actually piloting the deck. You have to know what steps to do in the proper order so you don’t mess up, and also knowing how to play around side deck cards like Needle Ceiling and hand traps after side decking as well as the standard traps people run. I know for a fact that I didn’t run the deck to its full potential because I didn’t have an adequate amount of time to learn all of the combos with Soul Charge. If you guys have any questions or comments about the deck, leave them below and I’ll try my best to get back to them. Next event is YCS Philly which I definitely will be attending with Primal Origins being legal; it should be an exciting event! Until next time guys! The Circuit Series comes to Washington, D.C. on May 31st-June 1st, click the picture below for all the info!

Discussion

I never really liked the idea of upstart in infernities. Sometimes you can go off but it’s too risky to play your upstart because you might draw a monster. And then it’s a -1 for the turn. How did it test in tournament play?

Nenananas

The way I use it is if you haven’t enough monsters, use it and if you have enough, discard it with monk or just set it

bob

I’ve played to little infernity’s to know if it is really needed in the deck, but I have cut upstarts from every deck I ran because it allows my opponants to get another monster for free now soul charge is in the game.

Nenananas

No MST main? How do you deal with Fiendish Chains? And with testing, I found 2 trap stun enough and the 2 Wiretaps were just too much, but that may be because I do run 3 MST. I also never find a moment to summon Exciton Knight. How/When do you do summon it?

Tyree Tinsley

I don’t like MST mained because when the opp has 2+ backrow it’s almost never optimal to space a random backrow and try to go off. I like Wiretap more because even though its a little slower it’s more precise, responding to anything they flip up.

I usually summon Exciton early to try and simplify the game. Its great to summon Exciton when you have Patrol in grave and Archfiend in hand.

Ntouros Vasilis

was hoping for a match rundown :/

Tyree Tinsley

Sorry I forgot to include that. I faced 2 Hieratic, 2 Infernity, Constellar, Water, Racoons, Geargia, and Heroes. I lost to one Mirror and Mermails.